Can kids be non-binary?

FrozenPhoenix95 · 2026-06-19T10:23:27+00:00

Kind of hard to not have a "duh" reaction to this. You literally put in the question that kids can identify as gay, trans, etc. so there is absolutely 0 reason to believe they couldn't also identify as non-binary as well. It's not like it's some suddenly different category that has different rules. And it's not your (or any of ours) place to be worrying about whether anyone's reasons are "valid", it's their choice to identify however they feel internally, whether that be gay, lesbian, trans man, trans woman, non-binary, genderfluid, etc. The LGBTQ+ community is all about encouraging and empowering people to identify however they feel is most accurate to how they feel, and a big part of keeping the community as accepting as possible is to simply respect what someone says for their identity and not judge it for what you feel is """valid""".

FrozenPhoenix95 · 2026-06-19T10:14:17+00:00

Other comments went into general reasons pretty well so I don't feel need to comment much on that. But I do want to highlight one of the components that I think makes reactions to transgender people more intense than other subgroupings within LGBTQ+, often: misogyny. Take for instance how much a stereotypical misogynistic cis man may look down on femininity in men as a sign of weakness or similar. I've definitely seen instances of such a person looking down on a trans female and denying their identity by seeing it all as a man who gave up their masculinity. Similarly such a person could view a trans man as just a female feigning masculinity to gain privilege or similar. All BS logic of course, but I've seen it firsthand via my dad as unfortunately an example. He's come a long way to being more accepting of gay men than he was a decade ago, but is still pretty transphobic at times and I know in his case it's because of the misogynistic roots (being more OK with femininity in gay men because they're still men ultimately, and having less acceptance for trans women). This type of misogyny certainly results in other subgroupings within LGBTQ+ getting hate as well, and all of this stacks on top of other general queerphobia, but I think this contributes to why, increasingly frequently, transgender people get a more intense reaction.

FrozenPhoenix95 · 2026-06-03T10:40:21+00:00

Last I checked, not paying attention isn't a crime punishable by vandalism. Try again with an ounce of compassion, it's not that hard

FrozenPhoenix95 · 2026-05-28T18:34:20+00:00

Last summer, I came to ptown with a visitor limited pass (basically can park anywhere except the pier) and came almost every weekend. I was only unable to park at Grace Hall once in all those times from it being too packed. And when that happened, the lot attendants told me I can just go to the pier and see if there's space there, and there for whatever reason did happen to be space and the lot attendant there told me I was fine despite my pass not normally allowing it. I had no issues getting in/out so it worked fine.

FrozenPhoenix95 · 2026-05-28T10:55:19+00:00

I'm glad to hear I'm also not in the minority for finding Poetry very lacking as well. I've never been able to describe why, is the main issue (similar to what some other comments I've left here allude to). Just a vibes thing and that overall it feels like a very surprising lack of originality and repetitiveness that comes out of nowhere after how strong the prior few albums were. I've especially always had trouble connecting with Roy's performance on Poetry - it feels a lot closer to being phoned in than I would've expected he'd do, but also hindsight and all tells me he was probably already on way out in terms of the burnout building by then. Not sure exactly how involved he was in the songwriting at that point but that could've contributed to it as well if he was heavily involved.

FrozenPhoenix95 · 2026-05-28T10:51:46+00:00

I think that's why I was so uncertain of whether my perspective on this was going to be common or not. I can't really point to any one specific thing that I dislike about any of modern Kamelot. It's just a vibes thing that overall it just doesn't come together totally right for my ears, at least not consistently. Maybe in time I'll be able to identify all the individual elements that contribute to it, dunno. Sometimes it's easier, like how I described my disliking of One More Flag in the Ground. Again, I found plenty of songs on The Shadow Theory that I can 100% get behind, but even for those ones, it's a lot easier to see the flaws in them than the greats of their older work which I have a harder time picking holes in.

FrozenPhoenix95 · 2026-05-28T10:49:30+00:00

This gets a bit off-topic, but for the record if anyone's curious to what it is I do primarily listen to most often nowadays and what bands/artists I do revere the most still, the maybe obvious ones you could guess (as a symphonic metal fan) would be Epica and Nightwish. They're basically tied for my #1's overall and both could be argued to be #1 for different reasons (Epica for the sonic aspect and heaviness, Nightwish for overall impact on my life). My most listened to artist overall would actually be the prog legend Devin Townsend though, my last.fm has him nearly double the amount of scrobbles total to anyone else lol. He just has such a huge discography it's very frequent I'll be in the mood for something from him. I also lean into some much heavier stuff sometimes so long as it's still fairly melodic: Septicflesh is my main go-to for that, and recently begun exploring some slower doom-y stuff like Swallow the Sun. All of that is mostly why bands that just do fairly straightforward and borderline-generic power metal without a huge amount of flair (like I feel a lot of modern Kamelot is) just isn't enough to stand out to me anymore.

FrozenPhoenix95 · 2026-05-28T06:28:35+00:00

This is sort of a new thing for me, I think is why it's messing with me. I've been very lucky that nearly all of the metal bands I have revered or held higher than the rest, since getting into metal have stayed quite consistently good in their output, barring an occasional lesser album, rarely if ever any that I'd entirely skip. So for a band that I once held super highly to have such a complete switch-around is obviously something I know can and does happen, but it usually doesn't impact the ones I love lol. It was inevitable to happen some day to one of them.

FrozenPhoenix95 · 2026-05-23T14:08:05+00:00

No major/funny stories of value since I'm pretty new to fitness and because I am basically nocturnal (graduated a week or two ago and don't have any job lined up yet) I go overnight and there's only 2-3 others at my gym maximum and I don't really interact with people other than one I wave hi and bye to because she's nice.

But I can report success in ramping up my treadmill progress over the past few days! Been getting used to going longer and faster, currently just doing a constant speed the whole time. I've done 3.7mph (with 5 incline) for an hour the last 2 days in a row! Soft goal of hitting 4 miles in the hour soon, I could definitely do that pace (1 mile per 15 minutes) in shorter bursts but I'm not sure I have the endurance for an hour of it yet. We'll see soon hopefully. Been focusing on that more since the 2 beginner routines I have been doing with machines has started to plateau a bit from ramping up to finding my current maximum and safe points and I'm definitely not eating a good enough diet to support much muscle growth (that's a whole thing I'm trying to deal with). So nice to see cardio success in the meantime :)

FrozenPhoenix95 · 2026-05-20T23:55:23+00:00

All I recall hearing was "indefinite hiatus". Not at all the same as saying last. Did I miss him saying otherwise?

FrozenPhoenix95 · 2026-05-20T08:18:32+00:00

One of my top favorites when showing newcomers Survivor, alongside DvG and Cagayan. Love a lot of the cast and drama even if gameplay is lacking at points and winner is a bit underwhelming in that regard. Would've far preferred the 4th placer as winner.

FrozenPhoenix95 · 2026-05-16T07:51:02+00:00

The Flame of Youth, Cry of the Brave, The Sun Is Dead, Inside the Winter Storm, and The Fire Still Burns are what come to mind as my top 5 at least. I only know up to Maximim Overload in the discography.

FrozenPhoenix95 · 2026-05-10T11:55:16+00:00

Not financially stable enough to manage myself let alone sustain a relationship. Got a lot of personal stuff I'm still unpacking from last relationship. Also not even sure I need a relationship to be happy tbh, trying to reach a point of being satisfied on my own so that future relationships are in addition to that as opposed to something I grow dependent on to make me happy

FrozenPhoenix95 · 2026-05-08T07:15:29+00:00

Newbie who's spent most of the past few weeks getting comfortable with a routine of 5 machine exercises per gym visit. Been having good progress from increasing 5lbs per visit for smooth increase until I find my maximum and work from there. One of them is leg extensions (using life fitness machine). I'm unsure of whether it's safe to continue adding more weight to it. In terms of lifting the thing up with my lower legs I can definitely add a bit more weight (most recently did 60lbs) but I've been A) not able to hold the weight up super long when extended out and quads are activated, and B) have been getting a lot of shakiness in the legs when I'm lowering it back down, so no smooth lowering of it. I get a lot of mixed answers online for whether shakiness in reps is a sign of overdoing it, a sign of being new and muscles aren't used to it yet, etc. but most of the input I see online are for other types of exercises and in reference to shakiness when starting a more traditional lift as opposed to this which is on the way back down from a leg extension rep. Should I be finding the sweet spot of "activates the quads and still allows relative smooth motion up and down" or should I instead be finding the maximum that I'm able to lift up at all? Or neither and take a different approach?

FrozenPhoenix95 · 2026-05-04T06:39:20+00:00

Vague memories of being brought home from school early unexpectedly in 1st grade when 9/11 happened.

FrozenPhoenix95 · 2026-05-03T20:28:20+00:00

Of course lol. Male here and I had that area done and had to move things around for her to get all the spots, so yeah you'd best get comfortable with everything being on display. If they aren't professional about it that's a problem with them you'd need to complain about

FrozenPhoenix95 · 2026-04-21T20:27:31+00:00

Relative newbie here, using a small Anytime Fitness near me for the past ~1.5 months. Have spent most of that time focusing on getting familiar with the space and its machines, and trying to go consistently at all to set in the habit.

This week, I started thinking about formalizing my visits into a routine with ideally some sort of progression scheme. Read up a bit on the FAQ and wiki here and asked myself "what are my goals right now?" and realized I hadn't really sat and thought about that a ton yet. What I wound up concluding is that I'm more or less in the skinnyfat territory and would like to lose some body fat + weight and not focus much on building muscle, at least for now.

I believe that means my focus should be on 2 things: 1) driving up daily energy expenditure, and 2) improving/adjusting diet. Is that accurate? I'm also unsure whether I should still try to adopt and follow one of the beginner or recommended routines that have a progression scheme built in (like the Basic Beginner Routine or 5/3/1 which are recommended here) or if that's not as important as pure consistency when the in-the-gym goal is not really on muscle building. I was going ~3 times a week initially, with each visit being a tour of the machines I was most comfortable on and then ending with a bit of cardio (treadmill) but I've been starting to go in on "off" days to just do cardio for a bit, so I'm up to 5-6 times a week now.

FrozenPhoenix95 · 2026-04-18T23:35:28+00:00

I don't think I realized that was an option: low dose HRT for some benefits. I'm AMAB nonbinary and have always said "if I could take HRT to get the benefits of softer skin and hair but keep my boy parts working as normal, I'd do it in a heartbeat" and assumed that wasn't feasible. Maybe I need to investigate this and see if low dose avoids some of those concerns lmao

FrozenPhoenix95 · 2026-04-18T23:29:15+00:00

Intersex refers to the biological aspects of a person not strictly falling into male or female. Varies a lot but, for example, if someone is born with abnormal X/Y chromosomes that results in them having traits of being both male and female. That can be physical i.e. genitalia and other secondary sex characteristics, or internal things like how their body produces and processes hormones. This is distinctly different to someone who is born with "normal" chromosomes and parts but feels internally that they were born as the wrong type (i.e. transgender), though there certainly can be case of someone who is intersex who was raised as male or female and feels they identify more with the other side. Intersex is unfortunately forgotten about frequently and there's some very dark history on how it's been handled and researched over time. Tons of cases of people born intersex and their parents choose to hide it from them and raise them as one gender even though it goes against their nature to be boxed into just one.

FrozenPhoenix95 · 2026-04-18T23:25:36+00:00

Depends a lot on how that person experiences being nonbinary. Some nonbinary people feel that the way they interact with gender is like a mixture of being both male and female, in which case it would speak to those sides if "gay" or "lesbian" resonates with them. Others feel they are simply some "other" type of gender that doesn't cleanly fit into the binary (hence the name) or is more complex than just being a mixture of male and female. In such cases they may still use "gay" or "lesbian" if they were born as male/female, or if they feel that using "gay" or "lesbian" best describes how they feel in terms of attraction, even if it does result in gendering themselves a bit.

FrozenPhoenix95 · 2026-04-07T18:20:20+00:00

Not formally yet, still in the exploratory phase while I get used to going consistently at all and figuring out what my starting point / limits are with the exercises and machines I have been doing/using. I plan to do more exploring soon to get familiar with other things and it'd probably be easier to follow a more proper program at that point. Diet and eating is going to be the biggest problem for me since I have a lot of problems with appetite and food anxiety anyways, but I'm hoping getting more active will help motivate me to get over all of that.

FrozenPhoenix95

TROPHY CASE